MORE than 200 years ago, an uprising took place on the island of Sto. Domingo, which is shared today by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The event shook the foundations of slavery to the core and marked the start of a process that would lead to the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. But despite the universal belief that slavery is part of world history’s dark past, there are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach and in the destruction of lives.
There are tens of millions of stories that deal with modern day slavery or what is known as human trafficking. Recent estimates say that there are at least 800,000 people trafficked across international borders yearly, and estimates of the numbers detained against their will within countries run much higher. People are trafficked for domestic servitude, factory or farm labor, or even as child camel jockeys in the Persian Gulf.
In a documentary "Dying to Leave,’’ a single mother from Moldova recounted that she was bought and sold 18 times to different men, dragged across Europe, until she was finally helped by Italian police; Ukrainian women were bought by male entrepreneurs who used and sold them; Burmese girls, some as young as 12, were sold by their parents to work in Indonesia as prostitutes. In our country, young girls from the islands are promised factory jobs but land instead in brothels in the cities.
But the forces of decency have begun to fight back with an extraordinary coalition of organizations from Christian groups to feminist organizations. Through their efforts and the involvement of the United Nations, governments, and law enforcement agencies, nations are implementing their own anti-trafficking laws and are pushing the issue near the top of diplomatic relations.
Despite the efforts to combat human trafficking or modern-day slavery, it is still a reality of the human condition in the 21st century. To highlight its negative effects on humanity, the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition is observed on August 23 of each year. On this day, the public is encouraged to be more aware of human trafficking, to understand why it is time to end a modern-day global tragedy, and to remind us that regardless of the world’s inherent inequalities, life still matters.
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